I think the reason a lot don't is because they simply don't want to believe the words they hear.

Or, they simply can't comprehend that people can actually say what they mean without being full of subterfuge and hidden motives. THEY are all built that way, (sneaky lying backstabbing unethical pricks), and can't fathom any other way of being.

I don't think anyone is disputing that Sanford is in love. Clearly he's having a pretty embarrasing mid-life crisis. The Palin thing is just odd and her reasons don't make much sense when taken at face value, so it's natural to wonder what the hell is going on. Plus, she's a politician.

The dichotomy between war and peace comes to mind. When at war, all is deception for fear the enemy will see clearly and attack. When at peace we are safe and we can talk straight. Trusting and expressing your real beliefs among strangers is foolish, but withholding them among friends is a lack of faith in the friendship. Anyway, Palin has accepted the hardest job of them all: she trusts her traditional friends in the American public and sends them her real message while she ducks and weaves from the barrage of missles incoming from her ideological enemies. No matter how skilled she is at this activity, she is being told by pundits that she should pick one or the other. It seems her only crime now is her intention to win. But why is it that a traditional white woman and Christian believer who choses to win can create such fear and anguish that she has generated 7 threads of 100-200 comments while Michael Jackson's death reverts to 5 comments on one thread the moment Sarah said she is planning to win?

But why is it that a traditional white woman and Christian believer who choses to win can create such fear and anguish that she has generated 7 threads of 100-200 comments while Michael Jackson's death reverts to 5 comments on one thread the moment Sarah said she is planning to win?

It must be this country's deep-seated prejudice toward whites and Christians. Those white Christians -- can they ever catch a break?

Occam's razor holds that the simplest solution/explanation is usually the best. But in any industry that values chatter over facts, the opposite approach seems to have been approved: the most complicated explanation is the best.

i wouldn't be surprised if we see palin cash in a little and then disappear. And Sanford, yeah, i think he is just confused on romance. and it doesn't matter. he should be impeached if only for abandoning his job.

But why is it that a traditional white woman and Christian believer who choses to win can create such fear and anguish that she has generated 7 threads of 100-200 comments while Michael Jackson's death reverts to 5 comments on one thread the moment Sarah said she is planning to win?

WTF does being a traditional white woman have to do with anything. I love how Republicans like yourself always pillory liberals for bringing up race, but you can't help yourself making some nonsensical point based upon the point that she's white. Is your point that traditional white women can't be feared? Is it your point that we should fear MJ's rotting corpse because he's black(or a rough approximation of black)? What is your point?

A traditional white woman, is a woman who knows how to, and does, cook for her family. Another traditional white woman thing is sighting in your rifle, shooting a moose, gutting it, and serving the meal. All before noon.

"Giving a vague impression of bold straight talk without actually making much sense."

My thoughts of Stanley Fish, exactly. He's an intellectual titmouse. Sarah Palin's different: I get what she's going for when I hear her speak, but her disjointed way of expressing herself makes me whince. I find that fascinating:

An idiot who writes well Vs a more grounded individual who can't express herself. The dummy is considered wise, while a natural leader is regarded as stupid. What did Stephen Colbert say to John Kerry?

JAC...White Christian women only catch a break when they do not deny the strength of their traditions. The rest of the time they are easily hated targets much as the Israeli Jews find themselves being the world's easily hated targets today for their very existence, no matter how hard they have tried to become like everybody else.

Like with Jackson's death, understanding the real reasons behind Palin's resignation will only come in time.

I have learned to avoid even thinking about these matters anymore, such as a plane crash or car accident, etc etc., for there is a reliable weeks-to-months duration of unavoidable ignorance which is unimproved by speculation.

Until proven otherwise, I believe Palin knows what she is doing. What makes the status quo nervous is when somebody like Palin breaks free of the pack. At that instant all predictability providing succor to those running with the pack is rendered irrelavant.

Eschewing the "business as usual" of the beltway and typical (Fill in the blank) derangement syndrome of the far left and right, Palin has disrupted with purpose their safe little worlds.

Underestimating the abilities to survive and thrive in a hostile environment like Alaska is suicidal. Toss into the mix a determined woman who threatens the masculinity of both men and women unsure of their own weak powers and you have crossed the Rubicon of old.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Palin is a skilled huntress and when she decides to go on the rhetorical attack the metro-sexual males and vapid females in need of constant affirmation will look like deer caught in the headlights of a Peterbilt truck.

Palin is not "Business as usual." Get used to working outside the parameters of the self-inflicted wound that is our current east and west coast aristocracy.

I wrote several days ago that Republicans who use to pillory the left for engaging in identity politics and victim-hood have now become the biggest practitioners of both.

The only reason Sarah Palin has been on the national stage is to appeal to the sense of aggrievement that some white Christians supposedly feel towards coastal elites. Republicans have been playing this hand for decades now. The problem for the Republicans is that with the internet most people "in flyover country" do not feel that sense of separation with the rest of the country. Also, there is a lot more mobility between the various regions of the county. You might live in the middle but you probably have a grown son who lives on the coast.Comedians in particular did a great job over the past year focusing on how ridiculous Sarah Palin's act was. She is too dumb to realize that nobody is buying this bumpkin act anymore and is now having a hissy fit.

Invisable man... My linking of three adjectives together must have been confusing. The "Traditional" adjective refers to the culture pre-dating the great late-1960's baby-boomer rebellion against all authorities in school, church, and government. Those rebel boomers now Run the institutions they hated then and are trying to destroy now (See, Wm Ayres). The adjective white refers to the Anglo-Saxon/german/scandinavian immigrants and their descendants that settled and prospered in former British colonies (now called the USA) since the 1600's. The adjective woman is a only social construct these days. All mixed together the three adjectives must seem confusing to you.

Apparently, in Alaska you can only use your own money to defend yourself against ethics complaints. The national democrats kept filing the complaints costing Palin some $500k to defend. So far every complaint has been thrown out. Nevertheless, Palin is near bankruptcy. She is not wealthy. That is why she resigned.

Sorry to burst your bubble but Obama and most of the people running things are now from the generation came of age right after the baby boom.I was taken back with the news yesterday of Robert McNamara's death that in term of years we are now as removed from the 1960s and the Vietnam era as they were from the WWI years.But some conservatives want to pretend that the 1960s is still central to our politics. John Kerry in 2004 was your last chance at playing that game.

And BTW, yea, hating on a certain vision of whites, now, is as real as hating on blacks used to be - and both phenomena are the result of what we know as Democrats: The Dixiecrats were the party of the KKK and, now, they're keeping race in our faces as another way to control us.

John Althouse Cohen is willingly ignoring the (wrongheaded) cultural shift see before us as a way to take another piece of white flesh. Invisible man is in denial as well - and on the attack - which is doubly stupid.

Me, I take the long view of history, but fear I can't express it well:

The racist white culture of the past was wrong - and it was inevitable they would lose. But they also did we Americans who followed them a huge favor by leaving us a wonderful legacy: The Greatest Country On Earth. If we squander what they fought so hard to protect, by continuing to perpetuate the idiotic notions they died with, we're no better than they were, and, personally, I don't think that's what we should be striving for.

Quayle, you are right. If it is an act then most Americans think Palin is trying to play them as rubes. If Palin is really the bumpkin that she is portraying herself as being, then she is just dumb. I wish I knew the answer for you.

Again, I may not say this well, but you and I are close in our thinking, though you're still confused:

I'm no "white Christian" and Sarah Palin's emergence at the Republican Convention was a breath of fresh air to me - as, I think, she was intended to be. You seem to deny there is a "conservative" outlook she represents (one that shuns the offensive coastal idea of a "flyover country") that favors an American ideal. You strive to weaken us. Palin appeals to our strengths.

And, while you're right that Generation Jones (the tiny group that follows the boomers - which I, and Obama, belong to) aren't part of the 60s, those idiotic boomers had kids, who also had kids, and raised them with their nonsensical ideas: so the 60s are NOT gone. As Hoosier Daddy points out (9:13) they live on, stronger than ever, and still rule the roost. The harmful and stupid wing anyway. Sloanasaurus is right: Democrats used to be different - Both Kennedys, and Johnson, were hawks; not part of this apologize to the world for who were are crowd.

Well lets see. We have the articulate Ivy League educated Obama who decried the policies which put us in the worst economic condition since 1929 and we thinks it can be fixed by spending yet even more money we don't actually have, putting the national debt past the point of no return, taking over an auto industry when it can't even run a housing tenement properly and wanting to pass cap and at a time when US industry is already fleeing or shutting down.

traditionalguy:But why is it that a traditional white woman and Christian believer who choses to win can create such fear and anguish that she has generated 7 threads of 100-200 comments while Michael Jackson's death reverts to 5 comments on one thread the moment Sarah said she is planning to win?

Now that I have mulled it a few days I really can see her point. ("What point?" You ask. Or "which one?")

Being governor - even of Alaska - requires focus and energy. Given that every move she makes or does not make is under someone's magnifying glass, and she keeps getting hit with stupid -- I mean *really stupid* -- ethics charges, she does not have the ability to do the job she was elected to, the way she wants to, and in the meanwhile it is costing the state, her self professionally and personally, and her family dearly.

Why waste more time, energy, money and privacy when the state would be served well by her lieutenant governor, her family will be served, and she can step back and focus.

Governor Palin may well intend to run for another office. But she may also want to pursue other ways of influencing conservative politics. Or both.

I grew up when there were very few pundits to tell us what people really mean. One reason I have bailed on TV "news and analyses" is that it is shallow, silly, and a waste of my time.

English is my first language. And I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. And the news media and politicians seem to think that the hoi polloi -- We the People -- need their assistance.

In this post modern world it is thought that things do not mean what they mean. Everything has to mean something else, and that varies by the interpreter. We do not need incessant deconstruction.

We need accurate information.

(And BTW, the picture that has been on Drudge shows Palin walking away from her resignantion announcement smiling. Please don't analyze that for me. I think she was satisfied at that moment. When she's ready to tell us the rest of the story, she will)

Sorry, but you don't strike me as someone who knows the first thing about Rush. And I can't waste time with the charge I may be a rightwing huckster's rube when it comes from someone who is, clearly, really confused and determined to perpetuate damaging ideas.

At least Jesse "The Body" Ventura had the courage to admit that being a governor was hard work and that he wasn't ready for the job...

Ventura talked about walking away from the job in his last 6 months because "the media was hounding him and his family", the legislature was lined up against reform, and also so "Minnesota could have it's 1st woman Governor" replace him. That caused a huge flap in the state as rumors Ventura was quitting spread. Ventura finally had to make a statement saying that he "was just thinking out loud" and denied he was serious about quitting. He then announced he wasn't running again, something that he had indicated earlier..but he still owed it to the people who elected him to finish his term.

Why should we even read analysis about Palin by some left wing commie writer from the NY Times.

What do they know.

I just pinched another less satisfying loaf. Just a light squirt of poop. Amazingly enough it required 5 wipings-that's quite a bit. Picture a mini cowpie-that was it's appearance. A couple of "squirty" farts accompanied the poop.

I didn't know that there was a female version of "Hawkeye" Natty Bumppo, but Palin seems to be it. I saw her interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. She was with her family and dressed in her work gear. She looked natural and at ease doing hard, physical work against a background of primitive nature. She looked like something far rarer and more valuable than a glib politician. Whatever reservations one might have about her skills as a politician, she seems to be an absolutely first rate human being.....She is only a few years, perhaps only a few months, away from this undocumented, unreflexive life that she was designed to live. Stanley Fish has it about right. She is living in a moment of pain and confusion. Perhaps she wants to wear designer clothes and step across the stage while thousands cheer. Perhaps she wants to wear heavy overalls and strain the muscles in her back. The fact that she is more tempted by this latter lifestyle speaks well of her. Compare the temptation that she has succumbed to to those that brought down Sanford, Edwards, and Spitzer. She really is a class act.